Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1887-08-28
LOVE AND BEAUTY.
A HARVARD MANS RESEARCHES IN
ROMANTIC HISTORY.
Relation Of Men Of Genius 10 Love - Some
Interesting AnscdOtes-The Best Way to
Cure LOVe-The Fond Habit
Of Kissing
NeiU York Times.

Everybody mas Deen, Is, Ut Will po ih'ei
ested in love, and almost all devote little
thought to personal beauty. Henry T.
Finck (of Harvard, '76) therefore addresses
very large audience in his book on "Ro-
mantle Love and Personal Beauty"
Perhaps as interesting as any part of his
book is what Mr.. Finck has to say of the
relation of men of genius to love. He tells
us that although it is mans duty and des-
tiny to get married, yet the testimony of
many famous authors is to the effect that
there is one thing which excuses celibacy,
and which may even make it virtue.
This is genius.
Bacon says that Certainly the best
works and of greatest merit for the public
have proceeded from unmarried or child
less men," Schopenhauer appears to be of
the same opinion: ''For men of higher
intellectual avocation, for poets, philoso-
pliers, for all those in general who devote
themselves to science and art, celibacy is
preferable to the married life, because the
copjugal woke prevents them from creating
great works"
|
serting that in looking back through the
lives of the most illustrious poets it is evil
dent that they have been, with scarcely an
exception, "restless and solitary spirits,
with minds wrapped up, like silkworms, in
their own tasks, either strangers or rebels
to the domestic tie"
Dante, Milton, Shakespeare and Dryden
are instances of the saddening effect Of
married life upon poets. Dante went
through life away from his wife and chill
dren, nursing in his mind the immortal
dream of Beatrice. There is that oft-told
Jest of Dryden, which sufficiently exhibits
his view Of the subject; when his wife told
him that she wished she were hook in Or
der that she might have more of her hus-
bands companionship, he said: 'Be an al
manac, my love, so That can change you
every year"
Scott's remark about Dryden was that
on no occasion when a sarcasm against
matrimOny would be Introduce has he
failed to season it with such bitterness as
spoke of an inward consciousness of do
nestle misery"
| But the same is true of other artists as
well, of musicians and painters as we'll as
poets. Wagner, when young man, mar
ried an actress, pretty as picture" but
she appears to have had but little sympa-
thy with his aims, and he lived apart from
her. He afterward married daughter Of
List, who did appreciate his genius, and
with her he was very happy.
The girl whom Haydn married turned
ont n shrew. Berlioz wrote: 20 that /
could find her, the Juliet, the Ophelia that
nv heart calls to. that ] could drink in
the intoxication Of mingled Joy and cad
ness that only true love knows! Could
but rest i'm her arms one anlumn evening,
rocked by the north wind on some wild
heath, and sleeping my last sad sleep"
We are told that few years after these
illusions were written he arranged an
amicable separation from his wife, his
former divinity, and left her to die in soli-
tude and misery.
| Handel was never in love, and had an
ayersion to marriage. In 1907 he went to
Dubock TO compete for position as organ
ist; but finding that one OF the conditions
of obtaining the place was that he should
marry the daughter Of his predecessor, he
fed precipitately.
Mr. Fnck announces as general propO-
sition that oil geniuses are amorous. Ovid
was the great amatory poet OF Rome, and
was Certainly one of the greatest Roman
poets. Dante was great lover. So also
have been Shakespeare, Goethe and Heine.
Poets have been particularly precocious
lovers. Dante was but years old when,
at May.day festival, he saw and fell in
love with Beatrice. Canoya said he per-
fectly remembered having been in love
when but 5 years old. Byron loved frst
at the age of 8. He tells us that his feel
ing for Mary Duff was 90 violent that he
| sometimes wondered il he had ever been
really attached since. His second love was
for Margaret Parker; this was when he
was IL years old. Burns was lad OF
IA when he first fell in love. de
has left q charming record OF that
attachment. "Yo1 know your country
CUSTOM" he writes, ''of coupling man
and woman together as partners, as labor
ers in the harvest. In my fifteenth sum-
mer nv partner was q bewitching little
creature q year younger than myself. My
scarcity of English deny me the power
of doing her justice in that language, but
Won know the Scottish idiom. She was
bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she,
although unwittingly to herself initiated
me in that delicious passion, winch, IN
spite of acid disappointment gin-horse pru,
dence and book-worm philosophy, noia
to be the first Of human joys here below.
Heine's second love was very re.
markable case. He saw her ut school
examination. It is said that the boy was
lust declaiming Schiller's 'Taucher when
q lovely girl entered the room beside ner
i father. who was one of the inspectors.
The boy suffered, gazed with large eyes
on the beautiful figure, mechanically re-
] peated the verse he had Just recated,
lHIs A.. b;nr, HE Iovelv daughter beck